Sai Nam
TBA
Label – Reaper Records
Release date – Winter 2012

Wanting to close out 2011 right, I hit up New York’s Highline Ballroom for the almighty Cro-Mags’ annual end-of-year gig. I arrived at the venue earlier than anticipated, my curiosity piqued over the first act of the night: Sai Nam. A so-unlikely-it-just-had-to-happen collaboration between Mike Dijan (Breakdown, Crown Of Thornz, Skarhead), Lou Medina (Breakdown, All Out War), and Justice Tripp (Trapped Under Ice), the group played its debut show to a receptive if docile audience–save for a little boy who appeared to be Dijan’s son. As this past summer’s sick sick sick teaser track “Comeback” promised, Sai Nam’s set showcased a hard NYHC aesthetic deftly blended with Tripp’s rapid-fire vocals. I have little doubt that once people become familiar with the material, the crowd response will soon reflect the stage-diving pit mania of a TUI gig.

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Ask 100 people their definition of deathcore, and you’ll get 101 answers, each different than the last. But the truth is that deathcore is actually really easy to define: it’s mallcore kids trying to play death metal, and try as they might, they will never quite get it right. Although that sounds like a criticism, it isn’t — the same raw, amateurish charm that made 80s hardcore like DRI and MDC great is the same reason why deathcore bands are awesome, even if they fail at their original goal of playing “sweet metal.”

Sure, their ham-fisted, clumsy attempts at playing “real metal” might be a little facepalm-worthy and/or lulzy at times, but on the other hand, they are a lot more interesting than the same old generic bullshit the br00tal death metal scene has churned out for years. Moreover, hardcore as a whole is just kids who try to play whatever kind of metal was cool 10 years earlier, so if you hate on deathcore you’re hating on the last three decades of hardcore!

In this article, I will present both a framework for assessing the history of deathcore, and my hypothesis about the future of the genre. Specifically, that deathcore has three, clearly-defined phases in its short history: Deathcore 1.0 (ripping off Gothenburgcore/melodeath), Deathcore 2.0 (ripping off br00tal death) and Deathcore 3.0 (ripping off djent/prog/wank/etc).

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It might be hard for all you self-righteous, 22 year-old turds and haters to believe, but back in the early 90s, it wasn’t at all cool to be into metal and hardcore. If you never got mocked by your HC/punk friends for listening to Immolation, Obituary and Morbid Angel like I did (let alone Gut, Excruciating Terror or The Meatshits), you probably don’t remember a time when metal and hardcore weren’t virtually synonymous. The fact that the twos genres now go hand-in-hand is thanks to bands like All Out War, who paved the way for the new breed of bad seeds who fill the pages of MetalSucks these days (did you see what I did there?).

It’s hard to believe AOW has been a band for nearly twenty years now — partly because they’ve largely flown under the radar — but they’ve been going strong since 1991. Along with contemporaries like Merauder, Overcast, Starkweather, Candiria, and Mayday, they were one of the very first bands to combine NY-style hardcore with death metal, creating the blueprint for legions of riff-salad deathcore bands today.

I hadn’t talked to AOW singer Mike Score in about ten years, but I was really happy to catch up with him. Aside from being a really nice, smart guy, he’s also one of the few people our age who is able to both fondly remember the old days and respect what the current generation of kids are creating — something that MS readers who can’t read the words “Suicide Silence” without getting worked up into a frothy rage might want to learn from.

Anyway, AOW has a new album, Into the Killing Fields, out now on Victory. You should check it out (buy it on iTunes here). And thanks to Mike for taking the time to talk with me!

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First things first: screamo is literally worse than the Holocaust in my book. With a few notable exceptions, I absolutely cannot stand this shit. That said, with bands like The Devil Wears Prada and Underoath selling out huge venues, putting out platinum-selling albums, and selling truckloads of cookie-cutter merch to every angsty suburban teen within driving distance of a Hot Topic, it’s hard not to pay attention to the genre. I might not like it, but Kids These Days certainly do. My biggest question: Where the fuck did this shit come from??

As someone who saw the birth of metalcore and “true screamo”/skramz firsthand in the 90s, I am highly confused when I listen to these bands. On the one hand, they are not so different from anything that could have been on Victory or Indecision in the 90s (Earth Crisis, All Out War, Bloodlet). Obviously there are some things that have changed over time, but the fundamentals of metalcore are still there (see my post “The 5 Kinds Of Music Teens Are Into” for more details). On the other hand, the kids in Alesana, August Burns Red, and possibly even As I Lay Dying have no fucking idea who those pioneering metalcore bands are, much less that screamy vocals were born in the tiny basement shows and vegan bakesales of the 90s DIY hardcore scene.

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We’ve all been there. Tensions are high in some packed, sweaty venue, sparked by feverish excitement and the potential for violence. These people paid good money to enjoy some type of cathartic release. The frontman for whatever hard-nu-death-crab-metal-core outfit is brazen and demanding. Can you believe this shit? You PAID to be entertained, and this guy is telling YOU what to do! The speech goes something like this: “I want everybody in this room moving! Front to back, side to side, NO ONE STANDS STILL! When this part kicks in, I want total [Insert destructive word here like "chaos," "mayhem," or "bedlam" if you're witty]. If the person next to you isn’t moving, MAKE THEM MOVE!” Than, if the action is not adequate, this screamer/pep rally organizer calls YOU some variation of “pussy” or “faggot” or really anything to make you feel like a soft, womanly bitch of a man in order to get in that pit and kick another grown man in the face, all in the spirit of making this band look like they are awesome. But then something happens, as if the air is sucked out of the room at the moment of impact – when those glorious staccato chugs kick in, the crowd is almost always powerless to its charms regardless of the obvious lack of substance. Like junk food and reality TV, we have a love affair with breakdowns.

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